Tag: Ripple vs Bitcoin

Cryptocurrencies are in the news as the prices of it have skyrocketed. Though Bitcoin is still the top choice for most investors, ripple kaufen prices are also on the rise and its token XRP has become the second largest putting Ethereum down on the list. But what is to be found out is if XRP can be a competitor to Bitcoin? Ripple has received a boost through MoneyGram refer money.usnews.com/investing/cryptocurrency/articles/2018-01-12/moneygram-international-inc-mgi-stock-ripple. Though both Bitcoin and Ripple are cryptocurrencies and use blockchain technology, there are many significant differences. Bitcoin was launched in 2008 and currently holds $16426 per coin and Ripple is a more recent token found in 2012 and has a low price of $3.12 per coin.
Listed below are differences between the two digital currencies.

Governance: The way both tokens operate is entirely different as so is the organization and the ownership. While Bitcoin is open source and decentralized and the ownership is with a large community of developers who agree have to agree on the changes, and hence changes are not easy. The changes made to the Bitcoin is backward compatible so that the changes can be opted in and out and also avoids any break in the network due to this change. Once the community backs the changes, i.e., more than 50% of them agree thet the changes are not reversible anymore. So the change approval process is laborious for Bitcoin developers.
Contrary to Bitcoin, Ripple is owned by a private company, and the ledger is a very close and internal process. Since it has individual holdings, the changes are fast, and that means you can see faster upgrades to its technology. Developers ask for consensus before making any changes to the network; if it gets more than 80% support in 15 days, then the changes are in effect all ledgers will support it. That essentially means the development is more democratic and also avoids splits which cannot be reversed.

Goals: The approach of Bitcoin and Ripple is precisely the opposite, while Bitcoin is decentralized and open source allowing anyone to use it. Ripple is using its digital currency and its technology to market it to major financial institutions for payments and other calculations. The Ripple solutions are commercially deployed and have many clients.

Value: The value of Bitcoin in the crypto market is massive, and so is the number of customers. There are more than $200 billion bitcoins in circulation currently while Ripple has half of the valuation of Bitcoin. While the total market is around $700 billion, you can see that Bitcoin and Ripple make up almost half of the overall market. Also, there are close to $40 billion XRP tokens and only $16 billion Bitcoins. That essentially means that Bitcoin is more valuable than any other token, but Ripple is quickly getting there.

Transaction time: Bitcoin is criticized for allowing users to pay extra to miners to prioritize their transactions due to which the transaction fee is about $27 and the time is taken to clear it is more than an hour. The transaction fees for Ripple is 0.0001XRP which network destroys rather than pay it to the miner and the transaction time is 4 seconds, and hence the value of XRP is on the rise.